Thursday, 1 May 2014

The Next Season of Sherlock is Likely to Take Another Two Years

The above video from the BBC shows Mark Gatiss (who plays Mycroft Holmes on Sherlock and who is also a writer and producer for the show) answered questions from an audience of fans in Brazil. At 4:17 in the video, someone asks him if more episodes could be made in each series. He answers no and explains that since each episode is 90 minutes long they each take on a film-like quality and, as a result, take longer to make.

To quote Gatiss, "Writing three films is quite a lot of work and then getting everyone together… [it's] increasingly difficult to get everyone's diaries to align, so we couldn’t really do more than three every couple of years I’m afraid."

Indeed, this is what has been the case in the past as the releases of seasons 1 to 3 have all been spaced two years apart. This seems to suggest that season 4 of Sherlock, which has already been planned out, won't be out until at least 2016.

In addition to this, Martin Freeman and Benedict Cumberbatch, the two stars of the show, have been doing a lot of work on other shows and films recently. The pair have both been involved with Peter Jackson's Hobbit films, Freeman is doing work on the TV adaptation of Fargo and Cumberbatch has been shooting several films with several more lined up. Unfortunately, this makes it a bit more complicated for the actors to get together and work on Sherlock.